Setting Blog Goals for the New Year

Here in Australia it’s 2008 already and later this morning V (my wife) and I will go out for our annual Goal Setting/Resolutions brunch and will sit down with our resolutions notebook and think about the year that is ahead of us. In setting goals we tend to break them down into different areas including:

Physical (getting fit, diet etc)

Travel (vacations etc)

Friends (what people we want to invest more time into seeing)

Family (things we’d like to achieve as a family)

Spiritual (making time for connecting with this is important to us)

There are other areas – but you get the picture.

For each area we attempt to come up with some achievable goals as individuals and then share them with each other to see what similarities there are and what we can achieve together. The whole process is both fun and inspiring.

Later in the week I’ll sit down and go through a similar process with my blogs – setting some goals for the coming months. (here’s a series I wrote a couple of years on strategic blogging that has some tips on how to do this)

All this goal setting has me in the mood to hear what others are hoping to achieve in 2008. So I’d like to throw it open for some discussion (sometimes I think publicly stating some of your goals can be helpful in keeping you accountable to them):

What do you want to achieve with your blog/s in 2008?

What specific goals have you set for the year ahead in different areas of your blogging (design, content, community, traffic etc)

OMG! My husband and I dropped the baby off with the grandparents and did the exact same thing today with the same categories.

My husband is quitting his day job in two weeks to go full-time with his own web programming company. Our goal is to make our business sustain us for the year. We also have goals to finish paying off our last debt bill.

I have only one big goal for this year in terms of blogging; that is to file an early retirement in my work, and be a full-time problogger. I know this will be a very big challenge for me but with all of you guys like Darren and his site, I know it will be easier for me. Thanks and Happy New Year to all!

I started a new blog on New Year’s Day. My erstwhile niche blog was becoming too general, so I wanted to take the general content off to its own blog so that the travel blog could revert to a showcase for my writing and adventures. I now have one general, three niche and one shared niche blogs.

Therefore, much of my goal setting has had to do with getting organized, keeping on top of comments, growing readership (I want 1000 readers this year, not necessarily of each blog but spread over the four ones that are just mine). I’ve also made some commitments regarding writing up my travels soon after I complete them, as I found last year that they tended to get dimmer with age. And, because I am a travel blogger (RV, motorcycle, travelogs) that means I had to set some goals for actually doing the travel.

I’ve listed the whole lot up on the page above in the thursday thirteen meme, something I’ve found an interesting tool for getting to know other bloggers and for generating ideas. Starting the new blog was actually a good move for helping me focus on all the rest of what needs to be done.

I’m hoping to make more customizations to the template my blog is using, but more importantly, improve my writing skills and grow that community around my blog. Those two goals are what are really going to be motivating my blogging in the next while.

Great post. I just wrote a post on rewriting resolutions as SMART goals where I share one of my blogging goals: to comment on ten blogs per week, five comments on blogs I have previously commented on to further strengthen those relationships, and five comments on new-to-me blogs to expand my network by forming new relationships.

I’m still formulating my other blogging goals, but I do know I want to dive even deeper into blogging this year.

I just saw a great movie on Goal setting that I think everyone should know about. The Opus Movie. The Opus is a great movie that teaches the achievement process and effective goal setting. It is a great tool for making a correct plan and formula for getting to your success and achievements. The movie features a great story but also lessons from several top personal development leaders like Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, Douglas Vermeeren,and many others. it was a fantastic movie. Check out the website at http://www.TheOpusMovie.com

I just saw the movie The Opus. thanks for sharing it Gord. I thought it was wonderful too. I recommend it to everyone. It is a great film. Be sure to see it. I will be attending the premiere of the film in Arizona as well, which is strange for me because I don;t really like to go out to public events, but i really want to meet the people that put this film together. Looking forward to it!